Solo Sunberth Cooking III

[Moritz Craven]

15 Winter 522

Heading out from his room in the tavern, Moritz made his way to the kitchen. While was not constantly cooking, also doing some other tasks related to the kitchen, his main work was in making food and meals for the staff and patrons. Most of it was what he considered mass made but passable to eat, though by Sunberth standards most considered it above average or good fair. If that was true though Moritz did not even want to know what was considered average fair... Likely something he would not even be willing to serve back in Syka...

Still being a cook himself he had a bit more leeway when making food for himself, and was able to help out the workers who had more dietary restrictions. Most of those came down to requesting food without mold or rat droppings, which Moritz had assumed was a given but had figured out from the fact it had been requested specifically that it was not a foregone thing in Sunberth...

Arriving in the kitchen he saw a fair number of crates, and realized some new food had come in and needed sorting. Once he ensured what was usable, or at least properly fit for normal consumption, he would need to work out what he could make from the odd hodgepodge of ingredients. Father Manowar had a small assortment of recipes that had been scrawled down, but often substitutions were required depending on how limited their food procurement was on that day. If for instance a small riot had occurred in the market, or the workers send to gather ingredients had been waylay-ed or robbed, he would nee to work around it...

Usually this meant making some kind of soup or stew and some bread, as these basic ingredients were usually available and could easily be adapted for whatever meat or veggies was in stock.

Opening the first crate he came to he saw what looked to be some kind of green thing, though he smelled it and the strong scent of the sea before he opened it... Leafy, slippery, and odd... It was only after looking more closely that he worked out what it was seaweed. Looking at it more closely he assumed if nothing else it would be fresh, what with it coming in from the sea, and after looking he found several recipes using it. The first one was, not surprisingly, a seaweed based fish stew. The other was a seaweed salad, though he did not seem to have all of the ingredients needed for that one. Being on the sea though fish was almost always available and cheap, and so he was sure he would find some somewhere...

Opening up another fishy smelling sea scented case he found, unsurprisingly, fish. Most days there was some, so he had not even doubted. This was an odd looking striped fish Moritz did not recognize, but it seemed healthy enough, not rotting, and not poisonous, and so he expected it would be usable.

With his ingredients in hand Moritz headed over to begin his prep work, making sure he had all the needed tools at hand things were properly clean. Not to mention making sure the fresh water barrel was full, since he always needed clean water for cooking, cleaning, and particularly stew.

WC: 551

[Moritz Craven]

Having a general idea of what he was working with, Moritz began with some simple prep work. He knew he would want bread to go with the stew, generally making simple flat bread that was cheap and easy to make compared to loaves of bread and the like, and so he began with making the dough for that. Having done it before he was a relatively quick hand at the mixing and preparations, the bit he still found tricky was the actual baking part. It was easy to over or undercook, though clearly overcooking was more of a problem since it could not be resolved by just popping it back in.

With that in mind he moved about the kitchen taking out ingredients, checking each new one to make sure they were still good or at least fresh enough to be used, before moving on to the next. For a simple flat bread he needed flour, water, and salt. He vaguely knew about yeast and making loaves of bread that rose, but had not actually done so in the past. Here in Sunberth most were fine with just getting some simple flatbread, and found it fancy enough to have that with their stew. And for it to all be rat dropping free..

After that it was a simple thing to get the rough size of the lot of flat bread he wanted to make, recalling the ingredient ratios to use. He had one large bowl for mixing, and another container he could seal where he would store the prepared balls of mixed ingredients or flat bread dough. Then all he would need would be to stick a few on a pan, flatten them out from their ball shapes, and to cook them.

To begin with he added in some flour, once more mentally going through the measurements and math. While he was not very good at the "feeling" out of things with cooking, he had a good eye for sizes and amounts. Still he did have some simple measuring devices for holding substances like flour and liquids, and still used those to get the ratios just right and to confirm his eye or adjust when he was off a bit. One, two three, he kept scooping till the bowl was properly filled. Then he began scooping in water from another measuring container for liquids till he had enough and began mixing the two. He kept at the mixing for a bit, before moving to clean his hands and getting out the salt. With that ready he began scooping that in as well, though with much less salt than the amount of water or flour by weight.

Having added in the salt he then went back to mixing, continuing on this for awhile until he had a good even consistency. By then his hands and arms were tired, but he reached it eventually.

Last but not least he began making small balls of the mixed dough, rolling them up one by one and then placing them into the clean container. These he would come back to later when it was time to bake and serve them, closer to serving the food itself.

WC: 531

[Moritz Craven]

Done with the prep work for the flat breads, Moritz moved on to the stew.This he knew would take longer, and so having knocked out that one thing so he could do it quickly later, he readied himself to settle down and focus.

Going through the recipe Father Manowar had for fish seaweed stew, he looked it over and decided on what he could do. He had fish of a sort, and seaweed of a sort... But he was also missing several other things in the example he had given. Which meant either leaving them out, which could leave the dish unbalanced, or trying to replace them. Neither was something he was overly confident in doing properly, but he expected that even if he did not quite get it right with his experimentation he would likely get somewhere in the area of a decent dish. And something that was by Sunberth standards quite good, and so worth buying. For once he was thankful for the cities low standards, in that even if he was not quite right people seemed to still think it was good... Or at least good for Sunberth...

Recalling what he had gone through earlier, he tried to pick out what items he could add. He had fish and seaweed... Wandering around to more crate he leafed from one to another, wandering, trying to decide what would fit. In one was some sort of jerky, dried out meat that was salted and smoked... In another crate he found an oddly spiky green fruit type thing, but could not figure out what it was. He carefully picked it up and moved it around, and while it was spiky but not poky, he was unsure what it was or where it came from... And had no idea how to use it, seeing as he did not know what it was. He was also unsure where the odd fruit had come from, though it being Sunberth he assumed someone had.... Liberated it from its owner, and at some point after transferring hands had ended up here.

Deciding the best way to try it out would be to sample it, Moritz started off by taking a deep sniff of the odd fruit... Only to blanch at the sudden assault on his nose. Had it gone putrid? But no, it still seemed intact... Was it just unusually smelly? Setting it aside Moritz let out a sigh, and decided to let someone else deal with the foul smelling thing. Putting it back in the crate and closing it he moved on to the next, finding inside some onions. While these were also not sweet smelling, compared to the other thing it was at least not foul... With that in mind Moritz happily picked one up to check it, setting some aside to go into the strew once he was ready. It was not in the recipe but he had used it before and felt its flavor would work well with the other ingredients he had. Though how true this was would wait to be seen.

WC: 512

[Moritz Craven]

Having decided on the basic ingredients to use, Moritz began setting them up. Fish for meat... Seaweed to make up the mass of the stew... And some onions for contrast and to add in some inconsistencies. For Sunberth seasoning was a bit limited, which meant other than a bit of salt not much would be available. Having lived and cooked in Sunberth for awhile now he was slowly growing accustomed to the limited menu and figuring out work around to missing things... But he was also coming to see how accepting people were of blander and simpler food. It had been quite hard at first coming from Syka where food was plentiful along with spices and things, but he had learned to adjust.

To start things off he took out a fish and began to work his way though that ingredient. For this he mainly just needed a knife, a place to put the guts and blood and things, and lots of clean water. First he cut off the head with a slice of his knife, working at the points around the "neck" of the fish and then pulling it off and dropping it into a bucket for fish heads. Not much of the head was used here, and so it went into another bucket... Though he had seen some fish head related dishes like a soup, and so assumed some people did eat it... He hoped it was used for animal feed, but with how poor some in the city were he did not doubt some people in fact did eat it. Or perhaps some slaves made due with what they could, eating the less tasty bits that did not outright make them sick.

With the head off Moritz began taking off the scales, to make the fish easier to work with. Using the back of the knife he scraped and worked the scales of the fish off, something he had done a fair number of times. He worked his way from one end to the other, being careful but methodical in his motions. Once that chore was done he carefully slit open the belly, so he could begin pulling out the innards of the fish. This was the messiest bit of the work, but had to be done. And lest he cut open anything bad, Moritz had to be extra careful until all of the bad innards were out, these innards being tossed into another bucket for said innards...

At that point his work picked up, no longer worried about busting open something bad, and after washing the fish out with water began chopping up the fish and filleting its meat into usable pieces. Setting that aside he only had to dice and chop it all up before it could be added to the water, but he also waited a bit before doing so. Instead he moved onto another fish and repeated his earlier actions, knowing it was easier to do several at once back to back rather than moving from one task to another and back again.

WC: 510

[Moritz Craven]

Having cut up the fish, Moritz next worked on the pot he would make the stew in. Moving the large pot atop the oven, he then began adding water by the bucket full. This part was less about finesse, and more about just getting things done. Loading up the pot he worked to get it properly filled as quick as possible, and then slowed once he began to near the proper fill level. He did not want it filled to the rim, since it would bubble over if he did that once he heated the water and added ingredients. Instead he filled it part way up, around the same height as he had used on a prior stew, which from prior experience was a wide enough margin of error on the fill amount.

With that done he added the heating part to the top, the oven already hot but shifting a piece such that the area on top began to heat up rather than just the insides. He would use the inside for baking the bread, being careful to watch the heat to make sure things cooked properly. For now though he needed to heat up the water, and begin the process of stewing the... Stew....

Having cut up the fish into fillets Moritz moved on to the onions, dunking each in a bowl of water to cut them up to avoid aggravating his eyes. As with the fish he did all of the onions he would be using at once, one after another, rather than switching between tasks. Taking off the outer layer or wrap he would dunk the onion, cut into it once, move it about a bit, and then begin dicing it into chunks. First he would move the blade on one way, cutting slices along the length of the vegetable, and then cut the opposite way. In the end this never went perfectly, and he would end up with some odd larger lumps he had missed, which he would rectify by going back and cutting them up some more. Not quite uniform, but close enough for his needs.

Once that one was done he would move the cut up pieces of onion into another container, and grab another onion to rip off the outer layer and dunk it into water for cutting. In this way he would repeat the process over and over, until a fair number of onions had been cut up. It being a big stew for a fair number of people he needed to prepare a good amount of ingredients.

In the end he had a small mound of cut up onions, which were ready to be put in the pot. But before doing that Moritz went to inspect the water he was heating, only to find it was not quite done heating up. With that in mind, and not quite ready to begin adding things, Moritz headed over to inspect the seaweed which was his last main ingredient to be used today.

WC: 500